The Government enacted Resolution No. 19/2018/NQ-CP (“Resolution 19”) maintaining implementation of the main tasks and solutions for improving the business environment and the national competitiveness in 2018 and the following years.

Question: What are the measures for improving the business environment and the national competitiveness after 4 years of implementation, and sets out the objectives and criteria for the year 2018?

Answer:

Eliminating and simplifying 50% of the conditions on investment and business

One of the targets that the Government has set out for the year 2018 is to finish abolishing and simplifying 50% of the conditions on investment and business, and proposes removing some conditional business lines from the list of conditional business lines of the Investment Law.

The business lines which are proposed to be removed from the List of conditional business lines must be submitted to the Standing Committee of the National Assembly before October 2018. Accordingly, the draft Law on amending and supplementing some articles of the Investment Law and Enterprise Law will be submitted to the Government for consideration in June 2019.

Reducing at least 50% of the list of goods and products subject to specialized inspection

Along with the reduction of business conditions, the Government also requests ministries and trades to reduce at least 50% of the list of goods and products subject to specialized inspection in all fields in 2018.

The reduced list of goods and products must contain the responding HS codes as prescribed in the list of imports and exports. At the same time, the Government also requests a drastic change to the state management of pre-inspection to post-inspection; essentially ending the practice where a goods category is subject to specialized inspection by more than one agency; and reducing the percentage of imports subject to specialized inspection at the customs clearance stage from 25-27% to under 10%.

Reducing at least 50% of the fee for declaring an enterprises' information

Under Resolution 19, the Ministry of Planning and Investment takes responsibility for combining the declaration of enterprises’ information into the registration of enterprise establishment before June 2018; and proposes reducing at least 50% of the fee for declaring enterprises’ information.

Cutting the time for implementing administrative procedures by some ministries and trades

According to this Resolution, the Ministry of Finance takes responsibility for maintaining the measures to improve the tax-paying index in accordance with the set target, striving to reduce the tax-paying time (exclusive of the time for social insurance premium payment) to 119 hours; disclosing the database on tax refund, ensuring to inspect 100% tax refund dossiers under the category that must be inspected, and striving, by the year 2020, to settle 100% tax payers' complaints in the time limit set by law.

In addition, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment will assume the prime responsibility for coordinating with ministries, provincial people's committees, and cities under central authority to implement the necessary measures to reduce the time for registering ownership and use of properties to 20 days; abolishing unnecessary documents, simplifying contents in dossiers, simplifying procedures, using the connected electronic system to settle administrative procedures for issuing certificates of land use rights, land allocation and lease, land registration, and construction work ownership with a determination of financial obligations on land./.